A Downtown LA Art-Scene Sunday With Painters Danny Fox and Henry Taylor

When I pull up in front of the house, Danny Fox is posted up on the front porch, Sunday paper spread out in front of him. The plan is to roll Downtown and check out his new show, “The Rain It Raineth Every Day," which opens this Friday at Chinatown Taylor's, the—you guessed it—Chinatown gallery founded by LA’s reigning visual poet laureate, the inimitable and unstoppable Henry Taylor. Fox, 38, and Henry go back about a decade; they first collided back in 2015 at a pub across the street from Danny's London studio, when Henry, 66, was in town doing a residency at White Chapel Gallery. When I ask Taylor what sort of magic ensued that fateful night, he says "I don't know—we played ping pong and maybe did a shot!" Fox adds more color: "Henry called me the next day and asked if I could find him some stamps."

I first met Danny Fox back in 2016 through our mutual friend, the artist Wes Lang. By the end of the hang he’d asked me if I wanted to write something for an exhibit he was doing at Sotheby's; soon after, we reconvened at his studio in Downtown LA, a stone's throw from the Nickel Diner, the sadly now-defunct home of the bacon-maple glazed donut. After that we bumped into each other from time to time, often at Clark Street Diner, near Bronson Canyon, where we both lived at the time. One of my all-time fave encounters, however, wasn’t actually even an encounter. I was in LA's Arts District, taking a few moments to myself atop the 4th Street Bridge, staring out over the muddy trickle of the L.A. River, when I spotted Danny traipsing down Santa Fe Ave, totally alone and singing at the top of his lungs.

"Henry's just putting on a shirt or something," Fox says when I approach the porch. Not unlike Fox on the aforementioned Downtown LA day, Taylor can be heard inside the house, belting out something not quite discernible but definitively punctuated by an effusive pair of "Yah Mahn's!" After a quick reunion at the dining room table, we board our various vehicles and roll down to LA's Chinatown, geographic body double for every abandoned amusement park ever rendered in the original Scooby Doo cartoon.

I first met Henry Taylor in Chinatown at "Free 99", his 2004 show at Kathryn Brennan's Sister Gallery, though "met" might be a slight over-statement. I was in the middle of asking Ms. Brennan who exactly was responsible for the insanely raw and poignant debacle in the gallery, when Taylor roared in and took us both hostage with his charisma, a sensation not dissimilar to being unwittingly thrown onto a runaway train. I promptly found an ATM and drained my already beleaguered bank account to procure a tiny, teeny Taylor painting of a boxer's torso in silhouette, with the text, "Spar Change" scrawled across a piece of brown cardboard that ran along the base of the canvas. (To date, "Spar Change" remains the only painting I have ever lost, but that's a tale for another day).

In the decades since, Taylor has become nothing shy of a global art-world Godzilla, culminating with the exhibition "Henry Taylor: B Side," which in 2023 set sail at MOCA LA before crescendoing at the Whitney in New York this past January. That said, over the years including when I profiled the man for GQ Style in 2018, Taylor remains pretty much identical in demeanor to our first encounter albeit driving a fancier whip (a Jag he bought from Fox) and sporting a slightly elevated threadcount to enhance maestro's signature sartorial prowess. As for Fox, he's also been on a noteworthy tear since we first broke bread back in 2016, putting up a steady stream of shows spanning New York, San Francisco, London, Miami, Copenhagen, Luxembourg, Los Angeles, & St. Ives; next spring he'll have his first institutional show at The University of Plymouth (UK).

Painting by Henry Taylor with “EPIC,” his daughter's name, painted on the wall.

Chinatown Taylor's once served as Taylor's painting studio (as well as also being the original locale of LA/NYC powerhouse David Kordansky Gallery.) The crisp white walls of the gallery are sparsely adorned with just a handful of Fox's paintings. Fox made all of the work in 2024 in Cornwall; this was his first real trip to LA since returning to the UK at the start of COVID. All in all, he'd made about 17 works for the show. "Henry walked into the gallery and was like, 'Take out half of these', which I did,” Fox says, “and then the next day I cut them in half again. At one point, we were down to three, but then we went back up to six. Part of it is almost like, you want to show people, Oh, look at how hard I work. But, in the end, I feel like I cut it down to the essence of the main story." Taylor chimes in from somewhere in the back of the gallery: "You see one great painting and that's what you remember. I remember seeing these [Richard] Diebenkorns—and, I mean, I'm a California painter, but when I think about it, what I mostly remember is that one that just sticks. Honestly, all you need is that one! We don't always wanna play stadiums, bro!" Fox shrugs, allowing himself just a wisp of a grin, and says, "And I totally get it—but I think maybe one might be just a little too sparse for me."

Walking around the show, I ask the artist how it feels to be back in LA, curious if maybe the show might herald a second chapter for the painter. "I don't know,” Fox says. “I can't call it. Wish I could give you a good line, but I just can't call it." Then, after pointing out—maybe even slightly agonizing over—a nose on a canvas that he'd like to address, he adds this: “My studio back in Cornwall was surrounded by fields and a few cows and a bunch of wind, and somehow it just wasn't enough to distract the noise in my head."

The title of the show, "The Rain It Raineth Every Day," is a line that appears in both Shakespeare's King Lear and Twelfth Night; it’s also the title of an 1889 painting by the Irish artist Norman Garstin that depicts a stretch of rain-battered seafront in Cornwall. As per The Bard, the phrase refers to lives lived in the wind and rain and most certainly not spent basking in the sun. Though Fox chooses not to verbalize at length, the main subject of the show is a woman featured prominently in at least half of the canvases. "Unlike most of my work to date, the canvases are based on actual scenes that happened," he tells me. He points to a pair of canvases, both featuring the woman with her head resting on her arms, which are folded on a table. "She was going through a withdrawal from some very powerful medication she was on, and I was really unable to help her and it forced me to just kind of bear witness to the process. In a sense, these paintings are my attempt to come to terms with the experience, which was extremely difficult. The colors, which are considerably brighter, are all part of my attempt to work through what happened and create something out of what transpired. Otherwise, by every right, these works should be grey and dark, but I just had to fight back. I was up at 5:00 every day. Wake up and before you even open your eyes, you're like, Oh, fuck, I'm there again, get up, fight back. I've been told that Moroccan rugs are often vibrant and fluffy in an attempt to illuminate the caves where they reside, and I think that definitely was part of it." Adds Taylor: "Like wearing white at night or some shit."

Also, enhancing Fox's current oeuvre, the backgrounds of the works offer a new depth which bolsters their emotional resonance. “In the past,” Fox says, “I used to actually flatten the compositions out, but with these ones, I wanted to really highlight that third dimension.”

Danny Fox, ‘Sterling In Withdrawal With Yellow Interior' (detail).

Danny moving a painting not included in the show.

Fox studies one of the larger canvases, which features the aforementioned woman boasting a very large head of blonde hair, possibly a wig, and speaks as if reading from a card: "They arrived in town out of nowhere and she and her mum changed their name. Mysterious past. A big, tall bird, and that she's gonna have a big career in fashion. From up North." Then he turns around, heads back to a small loft in the back of the gallery, and begins pulling out more "edits" for me to see. (Given where both these artists are at in their careers, this is for sure the most premium-level DIY show I've ever seen, especially after Fox casually mentions that he painted the walls and floor.)

It is worth noting that some very strong paintings have been pulled from the show, but Fox and Taylor remain steadfast in their decision to reduce—while, at the same time, appreciating what's been left on the bench. "Better with less, right?" reckons Taylor. "I mean, we can come in here and I can say ‘This one’ or ‘That one.’ But with my own work, I'm working intuitively. I don't wanna really hear what people say and, a lot of time, I consciously wanna bring shit [references to other artists and art history]—but hey man, if you don't dribble and you just run around the court, you ain't playin' fucking basketball!"

Another addition to Fox’s new work is the appearance of the artist himself in several of the paintings, which Fox sees as part of his own evolution: “Being able to draw from real personal events, to make something out of that hard situation because nobody else can do that. Watching somebody get through withdrawal is a pretty helpless feeling but making work about it made it more bearable, not for her, you know, but for me.”

Danny (right) with his painting ‘Self Pumpkin With Parasite.’

Although it was Taylor's suggestion to pare down the number of works in the show, he’s reluctant to take much curatorial credit for the outing: "Nah, nah, I got my own career now, and the rent's cheap. I'm happy to just be a part of getting it out there—I mean, man, everybody wants a show!" Which, by the way, is exactly what makes doing a show at Chinatown Taylor's a very sexy thing. Henry only shows what he wants, when he wants, by who he wants, and feels absolutely zero impetus to adhere to a calendar or schedule—the two things that leave most galleries with no choice but to water down their offerings and fake the orgasm. Fox fine-points it: "If Henry asks, I'm always gonna say yes." Says Taylor: "Hey, you know what I mean, he coulda brought charcoal drawings—I'm not bullshitting. Whatever it is, that's the show! Who knows, whatever, we can all just come in here and shoot some fuckin' pool on the patio, I don't give a fuck, know what I mean?"

Taylor goes back inside to check on a few things that'll be needed for the opening— drinks, lights, cups, et cetera—and I take the opportunity to ask Danny if he feels like he's finished with this body of work inspired by this mysterious muse. He nods. "I won’t make another painting about her or that time. That's done." Next, pressing more broadly, I ask how he's feeling about where he's at as an artist. "All I am ever really doing,” Fox says, “is just trying to get better. The reason I keep painting is not to make more paintings but to get to the best paintings that I can make.”

Danny with his painting ‘Black Grape Vape, Purple Tape, Gauguin’s Cape.’

Popping back out from inside the gallery, Henry laments how there used to be plants out on the back patio: "I mean, I got plants and nobody waters them. I mean, shit!" He glances over at me, and I feel a pang of guilt despite never having actually seen the plants in question.

He continues: “Hey, man, I'm just doin' shit. Sometimes I just wanna slow down and enjoy life. This dude I know hung himself and this is real life. It's been one of those kinda years—just everything seems so crazy. And hey, man, I'm grateful for everything. Nobody's enjoying shit sometime. Hey, you know, maybe John and Paul just kept working together and maybe John took some time off and Paul just kept working?”

Driving Danny back at the end of the day, as we try to avoid a moments-ago T-bone in the middle of Alvarado Street, Fox brings up how Henry feels all painters could benefit by drawing more. But he also says he’s learned to take what Henry says about his work with a grain of salt. "I don't take any of it to heart, really. He'll look at the work I've brought and be like, ‘Are these finished?’ And I'll just be like, yeah, Henry, they're finished. And I mean, he's my favorite living painter,” Fox says, laughing. He goes on to admit that even though Taylor theoretically looms that large in his own psyche, more than once, he’s been in Henry’s studio and found himself unable to track the evolution of a work prior to its ultimate completion. “I go into his studio and I just can't see it and now I see it somewhere else and it's a banger. And I'm like, ‘I looked at that painting for days! Why couldn't I see it at the time?”

Danny Fox’s The Rain It Raineth Every Day opens Friday, November 15th at Chinatown Taylor’s in Los Angeles.